Cars of the future will be able to do more than just parallel-park by themselves but will never completely take control away from the motorists who drive them, according to a student developing a robotic smart car that can navigate roads all on its own.~

“I think little by little they’ll be adding more features like those,” Mukunthan (Muki) Jeyakumar, a third-year electrical engineering student, said of Ford's Active Park Assist technology, which takes the hassle out of parallel parking by doing it automatically with the push of a button. “But I think the real goal is to be able to assist drivers rather than making cars completely autonomous.”

Jeyakumar and some of his fellow students from engineering and computer science will participate in the annual Robot Racing competition at the St. Denis Centre on July 24. Student teams from across North America design and build robotic cars to compete in a drag race and a circuit race—for prizes of up to $5,000—without any human guidance or control. UWindsor has won the competition the last two years and is hoping to defend its title.

The event provides students with experience in programming software for their miniature vehicles to navigate around obstacles and obey traffic rules, and spectators with a glimpse of robotic technology that could find its way into new cars, but can also be applied to everything from space exploration to mowing the lawn.

"Developing and perfecting these technologies is vital to Canada's global competitiveness and future prosperity," said Jonathan Wu, professor and Canada Research Chair in Automotive Sensors and Sensing Systems.

Josh Greig, who will graduate from computer science this year, built a car that relies on tiny video cameras that capture images of road conditions and sends them to a laptop computer mounted on top that’s programmed to analyze them frame by frame and make split-second driving decisions. Other cars use ultrasonic sensors, which transmit high frequency sound waves that bounce off objects and send data about them back to the machine so that it can independently react.

“It’s almost like teaching a baby how to recognize things and make decisions based on what they see,” said Greig.

Last year’s competition drew 10 teams, but PhD student and organizer Siddantha Ahuja expects more this year, with competitors from British Columbia and several Ontario universities already confirmed.

To see photos and video from last year’s event, hosted by the University of Waterloo, click here.

Josh Greig, Amir Mehrabi and Mukunth (Muki) Jeyakumar work on their robotic vehicles at University of Windsor stadium.

News story courtesy of UWin Daily News